Do you agree with the argument? — Aoife Jones

I think so. And I focus here on #2. I think that in order to know what it is like to be a bat you would not turn to the objective world. Rather, you would turn to the subjective world of being a bat.

As to #3, though, I'm not so sure. To the extent reality includes subjective perception, it may not be outside of the objective world but, rather, in it.

I can never know what it is like to be a bat. — Aoife Jones

I had to separate this out from the "objective world" stuff because I don't think it applies, as described before. I just wanted to comment on the ability to know what it is like to be another. I am not an empath, although I do have some limited ability to feel empathy. But beyond that, there is one thing I have noticed in hunting: The most successful predator seems to be the one who "becomes" the prey. And likewise, the most successful prey is the one who "becomes" the predator. I see this dance with the stalk, each party to the dance trying to think like and anticipate the next move of the other, or catch the other in mid move. The deer sticks his head in the grass to eat but sometimes he's faking (I can tell) and pops his head up fast, trying to catch the cougar mid-stride. The cougar is trying to only step when the deer's head is down and actually eating, and then freezing, mid stride if she's caught moving when the deer's head pops up. I've watched this, studied it, and applied it in my own hunt. I really do leave off of myself and feel the edge, the almost-fear, the "head on a swivel" feeling that I had in the Corps. When I "become" the elk, or the deer, I get touching distance. Anyway, I don't know much about bats, but I suspect that whatever it is that interacts most closely with them might have an idea of what it is like to be one. It will never be a perfect cross-over, but you said "like". Anyway, there's my five cents.

1. There is something it is like to be a bat. — Aoife Jones

Is there? How could you possibly know this?

Is there a "something it is like to be Aoife Jones"? Or is being Aoife Jones subject to continual change?

So no, I think the argument essential flawed.

Or is being Aoife Jones subject to continual change? — Banno

But could not Aoife Jones be changing continually in a singularly Aofie Jones manner? :wink:

could not Aoife Jones be changing continually... — Tom Storm

We're not talking about Aoife Jones, but what it is like to be Aoife Jones.

To misquote Wittgenstein, suppose that what it is like to be Aoife Jones changes continually, but Aoife Jones doesn't notice...?

If you can't put what it is like to be Aoife Jones into words, then you have no way of verifying that it doesn't change. But if you can put it into words, then it is part of what is loosely called the objective world, and the argument in the OP fails.

1. There is something it is like to be a bat.

2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat.

3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world. — Aoife Jones

1) Suppose there is something that "it is like to be" in general. Now the question can be framed: what's it like to be you? Can you say what this consists of?

When asked this question, I go kind of blank. That's way too hard a question to answer. I think I can tell you in a vague and general sense, what it's like to be sad or happy or confused. But I couldn't tell you what it's like to be me. And I believe in the reality of consciousness fully.

2) This is true, because the question is not well phrased. You can ask "do bats exist?" or "are bats conscious" and related question. But if you can't say what it's like to be you, it is hard to make sense of what it could be like to be a bat.

3) It doesn't follow. The issue of "internal" and "external" is quite slippery. In one sense, everything that isn't your immediate consciousness is "outside of you". So the computer screen you are looking at right now is part of what's called "external" to you.

Another option would be to say what's external from a human being is likely what the sciences describe, specifically physics. In this sense a bat or a computer or anything else in ordinary experience is internal and not part of the mind-independent world.

It's tricky.

:up:

When asked this question, I go kind of blank. That's way to hard a question to answer. I think I can tell you in a vague and general sense, what it's like to be sad or happy or confused. But I couldn't tell you what it's like to be me. — Manuel

Yep.

I should have added, if you want to get a general sense of what its like to be a person, a good novel is as good an answer as you could get. And even doing that, it's still confusing. :)

:wink:

A copy of Thomas Nagel's original essay is downloadable here.

An excerpt from the above:

Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism. There may be further implications about the form of the experience; there may even (though I doubt it) be implications about the behavior of the organism. But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organismsomething it is like for the organism.

We may call this the subjective character of experience. — Thomas Nagel

I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with 'b' 'B'.

I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with 'b'. — Wayfarer

Shouldn't that be 'B'?

Well that sure was a conversation stopper. :yikes:

Oops, I didn't mean too.

I was referring to my post.

Anyway the point I tried ham-fistedly to make is that what Nagel calls the ‘subjective character of experience’ is simply a roundabout way of referring, I think, to ‘being’. Humans, and other sentient beings, are beings, and the word ‘being’ has a particular meaning which I think it usually overlooked. After all humans are beings - that’s how we’re referred to - and arguably bats and other mammals are also beings, albeit non-rational beings. Whereas, I would think, tables and chairs are not. Beings are different to inanimate things because they are subjects of experience. I take that to be one of the imports of Nagel’s essay.

I must add we can not think as the humans who first left Africa thought, nor how humans at any time in history prior to the 21 century thought. We can not unknow the science and history we know and that prevents us from having the consciousness of another our time.

A New Age is a change in consciousness. The 21 century certainly is a New Age and what follows in the next century could once again be a changed consciousness making it impossible for people of the future to be able to relate to the past.

Do you agree with the argument? — Aoife Jones

To say I don’t know what it is like to be a bat, but I do know that to be a bat is to be like something....otherwise, for me, there can be nothing in any way like a bat at all, an obvious contradiction.....all I have said about my knowledge system is its determination of its own limits, but nothing about any particular kind of world to which my knowledge directs itself.

So saying, no, I do not agree with the argument.

1.) The major is true, in that there is something it is like to be a bat.
2.) The minor is partially true, in that no matter the quantity of things I do know, the fact remains that my knowledge of everything is impossible, hence not knowing the something the being of a bat is like, is merely among the things I don’t know, and also partially incomplete, in that the “I can never know” can arise from either an inductive inference as an a priori condition of time, or, from a deductive inference as an empirical condition of mere physiological impossibility. But....
3.) The conclusion does not follow from the premises, in that.....

A.) it neglects the possibility that reality and the objective world are already determined as indistinguishable by the very self-limiting knowledge system that is investigating things possible to know.....
B.) it neglects the logic that because it is the case that something is not known, warrant is immediately relinquished for determining the world to which that something belongs, and....
C.) having knowledge of something is sufficient to claim its necessity, but having no knowledge of something is not sufficient to claim its impossibility.

Or so it seems.......

Anyway the point I tried ham-fistedly to make is that what Nagel calls the ‘subjective character of experience’ is simply a roundabout way of referring, I think, to ‘being’. Humans, and other sentient beings, are beings, and the word ‘being’ has a particular meaning which I think it usually overlooked. After all humans are beings - that’s how we’re referred to - and arguably bats and other mammals are also beings, albeit non-rational beings. Whereas, I would think, tables and chairs are not. Beings are different to inanimate things because they are subjects of experience. I take that to be one of the imports of Nagel’s essay. — Wayfarer

Nicely put. I especially like the distinction between being and inanimate things. That lead me to find "THE ANIMATE AND THE INANIMATE" by WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS https://sidis.net/animate.pdf . It is an online book and I really want a hard copy.

"This theory of life is strictly mechanistic in so far as life is assumed to operate solely under the physical laws applying to the motion of particles, which laws are sufficient to determine a complete chain of causation. On the contrary, physicists, confining their observation entirely to inanimate matter, have reached the conclusion that there is a further physical law, the so-called second law of thermodynamics, which is suspended by living phenomena. There is according to our theory, this essential difference between living and non-living phenomena; and this difference would supply the basis for the idea of "vital force." Thus the two theories of life can be reconciled." — William James Sidis

That looks interesting but we have one more thing to contend with, consciousness. Animals have a degree of consciousness but this is not self-consciousness and does not include the ability to imagine.
It is our ability to imagine that truly separates us from other animals. And 100 years ago no one would have imagined life with personal computers and the internet. Our imagination is built on what we know and we can not unknow what we know. ( :chin: as I worry about having dementia we can forget what we know, but that is a different subject?) What is consciousness? Why can't we know how a bat experiences life? Does our experience of life and therefore consciousness depend on our bodies?

Is there? How could you possibly know this?

Are you denying the existence of the subjective experiences of, say, dolphins? That's implausible.

Nagel's point is trivially true: there are other creatures, they have different ways of experiencing the world, and we can't know what that's like just by studying those creatures.

That's totally non-controversial (or should be).

There is something it is like to be a bat. That something is the bat. I could never understand the supposed profundity of Nagel’s arguments.

There again, professor Bob Dylan says:

I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you — Bob Dylan

Being a bat is like being a very small flying me with sonar.

3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world. — Aoife Jones

Perhaps you should consider the notion that you have been EVERYTHING else.

I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with 'b' 'B'. — Wayfarer

Sorry, I'm too daft, apparently, to discern the reference. B ...?

1. There is something it is like to be a bat.
— Aoife Jones

Is there? How could you possibly know this? — Banno

Well, you're not a bat. Do you know what it's like to be a bat?

Nagel's point is trivially true: there are other creatures, they have different ways of experiencing the world, and we can't know what that's like just by studying those creatures.

That's totally non-controversial (or should be). — RogueAI

Actually, it is controversial.

It was controversial, for example, for Descartes who believed that animals have no feelings, don't feel pain, and that therefore, it was okay to torture them.
It has been controversial for so many peple who promote meat-eating.
It has been controversial for some many ists, such as for white supremacists who believe that black people aren't really humans and don't have human feelings.
I've known teachers who would refer to their students with "it", saying "it doesn't feel anything, it doesn't have a conscience".

Yes, Nagel's point is highly controversial. People are not likely to give up their belief in their supremacy over others, they're not easily going to give up their belief that they are the arbiters of another's reality.

1. There is something like a person.

2. No matter how much I learn about the subjective world, I will never know what it means to be human.

3. Therefore, in fact there is something that is outside the subjective world.

All this means that the other subject may not be like you, although he will be absolutely similar.
By the way, what is the "objective world"?

2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat. — Aoife Jones

How do you know that??

2. No matter how much I learn about the subjective world, I will never know what it means to be human. — SimpleUser

How do you know that??
The above two premises strike me as undecidable.

The premises one uses should be true, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.

We already fixed this

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6895/what-it-is-like-to-experience-x